The two anniversaries will be marked by several large-scale concerts both in Hungary and Austria.
The programme of the Mahler jubilee year is featured in a recent Hungarian publication entitled The Inner City of Erkel, Mahler and Liszt. (Ferenc Erkel was born 200 years ago while Franz Liszt's birth bicentenary will be celebrated next year.)
The Orchestra of the Budapest Philharmonic Society, which comprises musicians of the Hungarian State Opera House, will give three Mahler concerts on September 5 this year and January 24 and 25, 2011.
The late Romantic composer spent three years in the Hungarian capital, taking up the baton as director of the Budapest Opera House in 1888, where he was particularly successful both as a conductor and administrator. He lived on the Pest side of the Danube along Terez ring boulevard and had an elementary grasp of Hungarian.
A film shot in Budapest about Mahler's conducting career by ARTE Television will by completed by late this year. Mahler will be interpreted by Philippe de Chalendar, a French conductor who served as music director in two Hungarian cities previously. De Chalendar will give a glimpse of both the tragic and the comic episodes of Mahler's life, and will conduct some of Mahler's favourites, including the overture to the Marriage of Figaro and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, in the film.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
